WHITEINCH laundrette. It’s hardly one of football’s great cathedrals or seats of learning.

Ask Davie Moyes what it means to him though and he’ll give you one word: Commitment.

It was the scene of a childhood ritual, late on a Sunday afternoon, going there with mum Joan and the strips from the two teams run by dad David.

Any frustration at being lumbered with the weekly chore buried deep beneath her dedicated spirit.

That memory is why Moyes knows better than anyone operating in the game’s penthouse what kind of people it needs on the pavement.

He lived it. The incessant ring on the home phone, the diligence and zeal it took to make football happen for so many people.

And it’s why the Everton manager is the high-profile patron this year of the McDonald’s/Sunday Mail Grassroots Awards.

He understands that without volunteers like his folks, teachers and boys’ club bosses, who provide the game’s heartbeat, then there is no football.

For him, there’s no Celtic, no Cambridge, no Bristol City, Shrewsbury Town, Dunfermline, Hamilton or Preston. No decade in the Premier League with Everton.

Davie Moyes playing for Celtic in 1981 (Photo: SNS)

And there are no standards, no code to live life by like the one he STILL instils in everyone at his club from the first team down. For every headline written about him or his players, he understands how many people have gone into creating it.

These people will never have a word written about them, their names will never be heard on TV – yet each one deserves the true credit for working with the grassroots and helping them grow.

MailSport, in association with the SFA and McDonald’s, has spent a decade unearthing Scottish football’s unsung heroes.

Moyes said: “So many people are responsible for the path I ended up taking.

“Every one of them was a volunteer, someone in it for their love of the game and the kids who played it.

“I was brought up in a family embedded in it through dad’s involvement with Drumchapel Amateurs and as a teacher at Anniesland College where he ran their team as well.

“I used to watch them in the morning and Drumchapel in the afternoon when I was knee high to him.

“My earliest memories are him spending hours on the house phone at nights – no mobiles in those days – and it was always arranging times, places, pitches, refs, opposition. It was all planning.

“And my mum was washing the strips. She used to moan because it got too much at times for the washing machine in the house. We’d end up taking the bags to the laundrette in Whiteinch on the Sunday after the game.

“I used to go with her – the commitment it takes is unbelievable, but they just did it.

“Playing wise, I grew up in Thornwood just up from Partick.

“We played in the street and on a Sunday, you just gravitated towards the park. No phones, no texts or anything, you just knew.

“You’d start. Trees for goals, up and down the slope, then you’d add players as they turned up – you go on that side, you’re with us.

“Everyone got a game irrespective of age or ability. I started my first organised football for the 101st Boys’ Brigade team. We used to play at the old Whiteinch Park on the ash pitches. I’d be only six or seven at the time.

“And my next biggest memories are playing for the primary team at Mosshead when we moved to Bearsden.

“But it was Bearsden Academy where it really started because getting in the school team was more important than anything.

“Two guys ran the teams – David Blair was a maths teacher and Bob Lindsay was a PE teacher – and they were massive influences.

“They did it as volunteers, it was all extra curricular. They weren’t paid but did it because they loved the game.

“These guys gave me a means to get where I wanted to go, to be a footballer. I always appreciate that they gave up their time for us after school and on a Saturday morning.

“They started me off on the road and so many people like them are responsible for the paths people take – and it’s all voluntary. That’s why I’m still a huge advocate of schools football.”

“It might be the fashion but I’m the one who’s saying to them ‘Get it tucked in’ or ‘I’ll go and buy you a pair of proper shoes’. Or ‘I tell you what, I’ll give you a pair of my old ones’ – that’s always the one that sorts them out!

“I went to watch our Under-9 players and they were thrilled the manager was there to see them. A couple shouted across ‘Moyesy, what’s the team for Saturday?’

“They’re Scousers, it’s natural for them, but I’m having to shout back and say ‘Haw, it’s BOSS to you’.

“I was laughing but it’s letting them know you have standards to keep even at that age.”

The kids’ presence at Finch Farm at that age shows a generational shift in the way the game is going – but Moyes still has some of the old school left in him.

He still sees the benefits the core values of the grassroots game can provide.

He sighed: “I look at the environment now, and I’m not sure if sterile is the right word, but it’s the way we’re going.

“I would still love kids to be playing schools football and be involved with their clubs. It can’t just be about elite players.

“Even things like friendships – if you’re aged nine and you play, chances are your best friend will have to come from your team.

“I still have good friends from school who have nothing to do with the game though. You need outside influences.

“And you need to play.

“The way we grew up did me no harm. You’d play for your school in the morning and your boys club in the afternoon.

“There was nothing better than coming home and climbing into the hot bath your mum had run for you!

“All the gravel cuts from the ash parks – awww, the relief of that bath!

“Now we talk about recovery time and being careful players don’t do too much the day after a game. We didn’t think anything about that.

“But then, sometimes you just have to be driven by a desire and a love of the game.”

Help us honour new decade of unsung heroes

Last year's Merit Award for Services to Football went to Robert McCallum, pictured with Kenny Dalglish and Craig Levein (Photo: Alasdair MacLeod)

Welcome to the 10th year of the McDonald’s/Sunday Mail Grassroots Awards and the chance for you to put football’s unsung heroes on the big stage.

For a decade now, we’ve been asking you to help us unearth the people who are the beating heart of their communities, the men and women who keep football alive in Scotland yet ask for nothing in return.

The roll of honour we’ve established is a source of huge pride to us – as is dishing out awards to volunteers from every corner of the nation.

But we know we’ve barely scratched the surface.

We’ve had people with 50 years’ commitment to the same club, people who have breathed life into some of the country’s toughest communities through their passion for the game and by giving kids a chance in life.

It might be the league secretary with a lifetime’s worth of admin, the mum or dad who washes the strips or drives the minibus home and away in the most rural outposts, the boss who has kept the village pub side going against all the odds.

We know they’re all out there, we know they’re all driven by the goodness of their hearts – but we need YOU to tell us why the local heroes in your area deserve recognition.

You can nominate online at www.scottishfa.co.uk or fill in the form attached.

And please, whichever way you want to do it, remember to include some details telling us WHY your nominee deserves an award.

We choose the best stories to highlight each week before an expert panel of judges meets to decide on the winners.

Those chosen will have the night of their lives at a Hampden gala dinner in September and receive their award from the legendary Kenny Dalglish, McDonald’s Scottishambassador, and from national boss Gordon Strachan.

We’re after the best volunteers in the following categories: Youth Football (primary age to 18), Adult (juveniles, amateur, welfare), Girls’/Women’s Football, Disabled Football and Schools Football.

The main prize, The Merit Award for Services to Grassroots Football, can come from any group outside the Junior or professional ranks.

You can nominate at the SFA’s website, email us at grassroots awards@sundaymail.co.uk or fill out our form including your name, address and phone number then send to Grassroots Awards, Sunday Mail Sports Desk, One Central Quay, Glasgow G3 8DA.